Purple Loosestrife

This is a poem I've been wanting to write
for a long time.
A poem about purple loosestrife,
because Tanja told me their name,
the name of purple flowers
we passed in the car on the way to a teahouse
three months ago.

I thought at the time I'd write something
deep and rich and varied, maybe
throw in phragmites or algae or something
brown and bubbly but I never
got around to writing               anything

about purple loosestrife, and wrote very little
about anything else either, until now.